When Felicia Simmons looks at her 11-year-old son, she sees an intelligent, sensitive boy who is curious about the world.

In only a couple of years, Simmons is afraid others may see Zachariah as something else: a black thug.

“In America, the black man is the boogeyman,” said Simmons, 34, of Asbury Park. “We have to have someone to hate, someone to feel superior to, someone to fear.”

Neither Trayvon Martin nor Jordan Davis — 17-year-old black boys shot dead in Florida in recent months ostensibly under that state’s “stand your ground” law — had weapons on them the nights that they died.

But in both cases, their killers said they feared for their own lives. So they grabbed guns and shot.

Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, is white and of Peruvian descent. Davis’ killer, Michael Dunn, is white.

Would Zimmerman have perceived a young white woman in his neighborhood to be suspicious, as he did with Martin? Would Dunn, who told Davis and his friends to turn down rap music playing from their vehicle at a gas station, have opened fire on a car full of middle-aged white men listening to classic rock?

The answer is a complicated one driven by historic roots — from slavery to Jim Crow laws, and modern-day factors — from media hype to crime statistics, many say.

Across America, the debate over race and culture has grown increasingly heated, underscored by the public outcry that followed the deaths of Davis, Martin and others. Though some interviewed believe progress has been made in politics and the workplace, many say they don’t believe the nation is yet the promised land once envisioned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., where people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

“These cases eerily resemble early 20th-century American history, when someone was allowed to be judge, jury and executioner of a black man,” said Travis Gosa, an assistant professor of social science at Cornell University.

It is natural for humans to perform risk assessments of whom they can trust and of whom they should fear in situations, said Khalil Gilbran Muhammad, director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

“A lot of people don’t want to acknowledge it; they think they are color-blind,” said Muhammad, who is black. “Everything we know about human nature tells us differently.”

The criminalization of black men dates back to a 19th-century slavery-era debate over whether they could be trusted to be free, and continued into the 20th century over whether they should be allowed to live in proximity to whites, Muhammad said.

Statistics fuel fire

The statistics, some would say, add fuel to the fear.

For those age 18 and 19, blacks were nearly 9.5 times more likely than whites to be sitting in a prison cell in 2012, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Overall, nearly three out of every 100 black males were in jail in 2012, compared with less than one out of every 200 white males, according to the data, which is based on prisoners with a sentence of more than a year at a state or federal facility.

Crime statistics are supposed to be color-blind and objective, but do not always reflect selective enforcement of laws by the police, said Naomi Murakawa, associate professor of African-American studies at Princeton University.

For example, were police to regularly perform stop-and-frisk-like searches at Princeton, chances are that before long, students would be racking up arrests for drug possession, underage drinking, public urination and the like, said Murakawa, who is Asian.

“People will see what they want to see,” Muhammad said. “The jails of this nation also have plenty of whites, but I wonder how many people think that a white person is predisposed to violence.”

Barbara Gonzalez, founder of the Bayshore Tea Party Group, sees the Martin and Davis shootings more as tragedies than as examples of racism.

“I don’t want to hear what color they were,” said Gonzalez, who is white. “A crime is a crime is a crime.”

Were a group of young men to walk toward her along the street, Gonzalez said she would judge them by how they dressed and how they carried themselves rather than by their skin color.

“If they were white kids and they looked like thugs, I would be afraid,” Gonzalez said.

Media’s influence on perception

Headlines, too, may skew perceptions of black men.

A study of 1990s television programming by communications scholar Robert Entman found that blacks largely appeared as either perpetrators or victims of crime. Blacks were also more likely than whites to appear as perpetrators in drug and violent crime stories on network news.

On Feb. 15, the Asbury Park Press ran 29 mugshots on its front page after police announced the arrest of reputed gang members accused of selling illegal drugs and guns, and taking part in a shoplifting spree.

A majority of the mugshots were of minorities. A headline below their pictures read, “Worst of the worst” — a quote from one of the supervising officers.

“When I saw the headline about the arrests, I did think it sent a very negative message about minorities in Monmouth County,” said Quiche Jones, 43, the mother of three children in Neptune. “For it to be on the front page really hurt.”

While the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office routinely does not provide mugshots of those arrested, it made an exception for this operation.

Charlie Webster, a spokesman for the office, could not be reached for comment on why it released the mugshots in this instance and on whether the office has a specific policy for when to do so.

Hollis R. Towns, the newspaper’s executive editor and vice president of news, said he does not regret publishing the mugshots on the front page, saying that it was an important story that the community deserved to know about.

If the Prosecutor’s Office continues to selectively release mugshots — not posting those arrested for white-collar crimes, for example — Towns said he is considering not publishing any of them.

“It’s a disservice that the community has to resort to that,” said Towns, who is black. “All suspects should have their mugshots used in the paper, so that there is a balance.”

Roots in rap

The portrayal of crime in hardcore hip-hop — often loaded with drug references and increasingly popular among mainstream audiences — may color perceptions just as significantly as the crimes themselves.

Many outsiders only imagine what minority life is like from a rap lyric, Gosa said.

“We live in a very segregated society still,” said Cornell’s Gosa, who is black. “Barring real cross-racial contacts, a lot of people just craft stereotypes based on hardcore lyrics.”

It can be a short jump between a glorified view of criminals in music to an outsider’s view of a black teen on the street, said Walter Greason, a history instructor at Monmouth University, West Long Branch.

“The notion of dangerous, violent criminals is being projected on millions of young boys,” said Greason, who is black.

During his murder trial in Florida, Dunn told the jury that Davis and his friends ignored his request for them to turn down the “rap crap” blasting out of their red SUV at a Florida gas station, calling him a “cracker” in the process.

Dunn claims he saw a weapon in the SUV, so he grabbed his gun and shot into the vehicle, killing Davis. A jury this month found Dunn guilty of three attempted murder charges but deadlocked on a first-degree murder charge for Davis’ death.

Dunn’s defense: he fired in self-defense, which is allowed under Florida’s stand your ground law. There is no such law in New Jersey, where citizens can use deadly force only to defend themselves inside the home or if they cannot flee to safety during an attack.

“Dunn represents the sentiment that someone needs to stand up to these young black gangsters, to these thugs who listen to rap,” Gosa said. “These people are attacking what is good about America.”

Media companies profit off negative portrayals of black men every day, knowing that sex, money and crime is what sells, Jones said. Companies need to be more responsible about what they know children will emulate and parents need to control what they allow in their homes, she said.

“Let’s start celebrating those who are portraying the correct image,” Jones said.

As a father, teacher and basketball coach at Lakewood High School, Randy Holmes said he teaches his young protegees to comport themselves professionally, to pull up their pants and treat others with respect.

“Never put yourself in a compromising situation,” said Holmes, 40, who is black. “Why? Because as a young black male, the rules are a little different. The rules are stacked against you.”

White-hot anger?

Following the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black president, feelings of anxiety and anger seemed to grow among some whites in the country, Gosa said.

“It’s so deeply in us to be afraid of what’s different,” said Susan Voss Vliet, 52, a white mother of two from Toms River. Some whites have spoken negatively about minorities in front of her, she said.

“Someone told me they were not going to send their child to (the New Jersey Institute of Technology) because it’s full of N-words,” Voss Vliet said.

Projecting notions of danger on black men is nothing new, Greason said. During the 19th and 20th centuries, it was a reason to keep them as slaves, a justification for lynchings meant to protect white women from the black man’s sexual hunger, and a rationale for enacting Jim Crow laws to keep them in their place, he said.

“It’s hard for us to undo decades and centuries of social construction,” Greason said. “This perception of what is a thug gives people a right to lash out and defend themselves.”

But Greason sees hope for the future, as more and more people live in a country without having experienced Jim Crow segregation laws, where at least overt racism is increasingly not tolerated.

“It took most of the 20th century to undo the damage of the 19th,” Greason said. “We’re still in the early stages of this.”

A changing tide

Eric Carter is one year older than Martin and Davis were when the Florida teens were killed. The Jackson native said he has never experienced racism in his life, even while going to school and living in a neighborhood where few other children were black.

“I never really felt awkward or different,” said Carter, 18, who believes his white friends would stick up for him were he to get into a race-based situation. “They would take it personally, if someone were to call me the N-word or anything like that.”

Combating the stigma that black men face in the United States should not only be a burden for blacks to fight, but for all citizens, said Jason Daniels, 39, of Long Branch.

“We need good upstanding white people, they need to stand up,” said Daniels, who is black. “As long as they remain silent, nothing will change.”

Daniels also believes that those who feel strongly against what he sees as Florida’s lax gun laws should take a cue from the boycotts of the 1950s and 1960s and not patronize the state.

“The same people who are up in arms about these cases go on vacation to Disney World,” Daniels said. “What really talks in this country is economics.”

Arguably, Felicia Simmons, the Asbury Park mother, has reason to be cautious — her home on the west side of the city was struck with 19 bullets in 2013, as she and her son slept. When she stepped outside, a young man was lying on her front yard, bleeding of a gunshot wound.

But Simmons says that she tries not see a skin color — she tries to see a person. And if that unfamiliar person is leaning into the window of an unfamiliar car in her neighborhood, where drug deals are common, that is when she will suspect that something may be wrong.

“This area is a heroin pipeline,” Simmons said. “If anything, I’m more conscious of Caucasians in my neighborhood. If a Caucasian is coming through my block, chances are he may not be up to any good.”

Simmons fears for the future of son Zachariah and other young black boys. She is afraid they will be judged not for their beauty but for their perceived malice. But Simmons is raising Zachariah with love, not fear, she said.

“I’m raising an intelligent young man,” Simmons said. “I don’t let him breathe off that fear.”

Pentón is a reporter on the superstorm Sandy team at the Asbury Park Press. A 2000 graduate of New York University, he joined the Press in 2006. A Latino of Cuban descent, he grew up and lives in Union City.

We asked readers on Facebook whether they believe racial tension is still high in the U.S. in the wake of the Michael Dunn verdict. Here’s what they had to say:

Susan Voss Vliet We still live in a very racist society. I know this because people think it’s okay to say racist things around me because I’m white. It disgusts me and I never fail to let those people know. Even more disturbing is the number of them and how they all try to claim they are not racist.

Joe Indiviglio Of course it’s about race if not how would rev al Jesse Jackson CNN fox NBC and u make money?

Patrick M. Faley This is not as much a matter of race but one of the gun mentality of this nation. I fully support trained, responsible, sane individuals to own regulated limited numbers of firearms. But the point is these weapons need to be controlled as authorized by the Second Amendment.